The real Peaky Blinders Granddaughter’s shocking discovery of family link to notorious Brum gang
IT’S the sort of awful family secret few would care to uncover, however long ago it happened. The death of a policeman at the hands of your grandfather is not a tale that can be conveyed with any sense of pride, even with the passage of time.
But now a new insight into the lives of the real Peaky Blinders has been unearthed after the descendent of a gang member who was jailed for killing a Birmingham copper in 1901 was traced.
The BBC drama recently returned to TV screens for its fourth season, telling the story of the rise of gangster Thomas Shelby and his family’s criminal gang. But the on-screen characters echo a truth that is just as dramatic, bloody and compelling.
West Midlands Police has now unearthed new details of a band of five criminal brothers during work on a heritage project to transform the former Victorian cells, in Steelhouse Lane in Birmingham city centre, into museum.
The force’s own historian, Corinne Brazier, managed to track down the granddaughter of George Fowler, one of three Peaky Blinders jailed for the killing of a 24-year-old PC Charles Gunter in 1901.
He died after being hit on the head by a brick thrown by Fowler and fellow gang members Joseph Adey and John Davis in Staniforth Street, in the Gun Quarter. Each of the men were jailed for 15 years for manslaughter after it could not be proved who hurled the fatal missile.
Fowler’s granddaughter, Elaine Myles, from Shard End, started looking into the background of her grandad and her four great uncles after a devel opi ng an interest in genealogy in the early 2000s. She said: “We found a trunk of archives when clearing my grandmother’s house in 1979. That’s what led me to look into his past in more detail. It was shocking to find that relatives of mine just two generations removed were linked to serious crime in Birmingham.
“Had George Fowler been convicted of murder I would never have been born. Looking at old newspaper articles, the judge said he wanted all three to swing but couldn’t impose the death penalty as it wasn’t clear who was responsible.
“My nan was a strict Catholic and brought up in a convent so is the last person you would have expected to get involved with a criminal.
“He was well known in the Stech- ford area, a small man but feared. He was one of five brothers – along with Fred, Alfred, Joseph and Harry – who all would have been linked to the Peaky Blinders.
“George’s involvement in crime was totally hidden from us when we were growing up. It was all kept quiet and my nan only ever talked about her ‘beloved George’.”
Fowler spent another spell behind bars for making counterfeit coins, while brother Alf was once shot by a police officer during a disturbance. The bullet hit him on the backside and he survived.
Another brother, Harry – photographed in a cap in the Steelhouse Lane lock-up in 1904 having been arrested for bike theft – resorted to selling postcards of himself dressed as a female nurse to make money after being seriously injured on the Western Front in the First World War.
Ms Brazier said she was amazed when Ms Myles spotted images of her grandfather and great uncles from the police files.
She said: “The more people who come forward the more amazing stories we are unearthing.
“Harry, like many of the others, went to fight in the First World War. He was buried alive for 12 hours following a mortar bombardment.
“I initially found the photo of a baby-faced Harry Fowler when he was booked into custody and Elaine has made us aware of the postcards showing him dressed in Red Cross nurses’ outfits. We believe he was selling them to form some kind of meagre existence.
“They are fascinating archives and I hope to show them alongside other exhibits at a Peaky Blinders display at the lock-up in 2018. The Peaky Blinders were a street gang who would think nothing of attacking someone if they so much as looked at them in the wrong way – but they were also very brave men who fought, and in many cases died, for their country.
“Season five of TV’s Peaky Blinders has already been commissioned and I can’t think of a better location than to film some of the scenes than from the very lock-up where many of the members would undoubtedly have spent time upon arrest.”
Ms Brazier is currently transforming the former Steelhouse Lane cells into the official home of the West Midlands Police museum.
She has already led six open days at the facility, which only stopped housing offenders in 2016.
She added: “It’s the perfect location for the new museum and we have already made an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund.
“There is so much history within the building itself and I’d love to hear from anybody or any organisation that thinks they can support us.”